The Invasion of the Tearling

“Who is he?”


“A carpenter.” Da’s bald head gleamed, even in the dim torchlight, and Ewen saw with some uneasiness that the skin of Da’s forehead was getting thin, like linen. Even Da would die eventually, Ewen knew that, deep in a dark place in his mind. “A builder.”

“What did he build, Da?”

“Cages,” Da replied shortly. “Be very careful, Ew.”

Ewen looked around, confused. The dungeon was full of cages. But Da didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and so Ewen stored the facts in his mind alongside the rest of the mysteries he didn’t understand. Once in a while, usually when Ewen wasn’t even trying, he would solve a mystery, and that was a great and extraordinary feeling, the way he imagined birds would feel as they swooped across the sky. But no matter how he stared at the man in the cell, no answers were forthcoming.

After that, Ewen thought he was prepared for anyone to enter his dungeon, but he was wrong. Two days before, two men in the black uniform of the Tear army had burst in, dragging a woman between them. But this was no fancy woman like the Regent’s redhead; she spat and kicked, shouting curses at the two men who dragged on her arms. Ewen had never seen anything like her. She seemed all white, from head to toe, as if her flesh had lost all of its color. Her hair was similarly faded, like hay that had sat too long in the sunlight. Even her dress was white, though Ewen thought it might once have been light blue. She looked like a ghost. The soldiers tried to force her through the open door of Cell Two, but she grabbed at the bars and hung on.

“Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,” the taller soldier panted.

“Fuck you, you limp prawn!”

The soldier kept patient pressure on her hands, trying to peel back her locked fingers, while the other soldier worked on hauling her into the cage. Ewen hung back, not sure whether to get involved. The woman’s eyes fell on him, and he went cold inside. Her irises were circled pink, but deep in the center was a blue so light that it glittered like ice. Ewen saw something terrible there, animal and sick. The woman opened her mouth, and Ewen knew what was coming, even before she spoke.

“I know all about you, boy. You’re the halfwit.”

“Give us some help, for Christ’s sake!” one of the soldiers snarled.

Ewen jumped forward. He didn’t want to touch any part of the ghost-woman, so he took hold of her dress and began to tug her backward. With both soldiers free to work on her fingers, they finally succeeded in prying her loose from the bars and then flung her into the cage, where she ran into the cot and fell to the ground. Ewen was barely able to get the door closed before the woman hurled herself against the bars, spewing more curses at the three of them.

“Christ, what a job!” one of the soldiers muttered. He wiped his brow, where a mole grew like a small mushroom. “Locked in, though, she shouldn’t give you too much trouble. She’s blind as a mouse.”

“Only watch out when the owl comes hunting,” the other remarked, and they chuckled together.

“What’s her name and crime?”

“Brenna. Her crime …” The soldier with the mole looked at his friend. “Hard to say. Treason, probably.”

Ewen wrote the crime in the book, and the soldiers left the dungeon, cheerful now, their work done. The soldiers had said that the ghost-woman was blind, but Ewen quickly discovered that wasn’t so. When he moved, she turned her head and her blue-pink eyes followed him across the dungeon. When he looked up, he found her gaze pinned on him, a horrible smile stretching her mouth. Ewen usually brought his prisoners their food in their cells, for he was too big to be physically overpowered by an unarmed man. But now he was glad of the little door on the front of the cell that allowed him to slide the woman’s food trays through. He wanted the comfort of bars between them. Cell Two was the best cell for dangerous prisoners, since it faced directly into Ewen’s small living quarters; he was a light sleeper. But now, when it came time for bed, he found that he could not sleep with that awful gaze upon him, and he finally moved his cot into the corner so that the doorway blocked the view. Still, he could sense the woman, sleepless and malevolent, even in the dark, and for the past few days his sleep had been uneasy, frequently broken.